


shadows taller than our souls

by pendules



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: M/M, Marauders' Era
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-11-22
Updated: 2014-11-22
Packaged: 2018-02-26 14:42:53
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,221
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2655785
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/pendules/pseuds/pendules
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>"Remus decides he likes him, as a separate entity from James, from the gossip he's tried not to hear about his family, from their little group of four that he somehow came to belong to without realising it. Remus doesn't have much family, has never really had friends. Maybe they have more in common than he'd ever thought. Maybe they've both <i>found</i> something. Together."</p>
            </blockquote>





	shadows taller than our souls

They've been at Hogwarts for a month the first time they're _really_ alone together. He and James have practically been attached at the hip and Peter goes wherever James goes, so Remus hasn't actually had a proper conversation with Sirius yet. But now James is in detention (and he knows Sirius wishes he were there too) and Peter's doing some extra Potions homework after he'd managed to melt his cauldron and they're sitting across from each other at dinner.

It's - weird. Or _he's_ weird. He's the same, somehow, but totally different. He's not trying to be witty or clever for James' and Peter's sakes. Remus doesn't know if he should be pleased or slightly offended that Sirius isn't even _trying_ to impress him.

He doesn't need to though. Sirius is funny and cool without trying. Even when he's being earnest and a little awkward. Maybe he should _not try_ more often.

They talk about books, of all things (the Black family library has some truly ghastly volumes and Sirius has been making his way through it since he could recognise words), and music - Sirius rolls his eyes when Remus brings up jazz but says it suits him. Sirius is all rock and roll and dark eyes and rough voice at the age of eleven.

Remus decides he likes him, as a separate entity from James, from the gossip he's tried not to hear about his family, from their little group of four that he somehow came to belong to without realising it. Remus doesn't have much family, has never really had friends. Maybe they have more in common than he'd ever thought. Maybe they've both _found_ something. Together.

Sirius looks at him strangely though, too intense, too long, like he's trying to figure something out. When he does, he thinks it might be the end, before it even really starts at all. 

*

They know, they _know_ , and it's okay. They know, and Sirius still looks at him the same way, not like he's contagious or dying or like he's sorry for him, but like he's interested. Like he's _interesting_ , like Remus is some cool book that can probably put a curse on your enemies if you read it backwards twelve times. He looks away quickly when Remus catches him now. He's reading enough actual books these days though; they're always in the library, all three of them huddled together, table stacked with huge, leather-bound volumes, _whispering_. They always seem to conveniently be doing homework when Remus turns up though.

Then, it's his midnight on his birthday, and they've been at it for about two whole days, and he's not just vaguely curious but also kind of annoyed now. 

Until Sirius shows up, looking more terrible than Remus has ever seen him, eyes bloodshot with huge dark circles under them, hair unkempt and tangled like he hasn't combed it in days, and he figures it must be something _incredibly important_ , like an April Fool's prank to top not only last year's but the last hundred years' combined. 

He just gives him a quizzical look and Sirius just explodes like he's been wanting to tell for months. 

"We did something - for you, I mean. It's not ready yet but it will be. We'll tell you in the morning properly. James will murder me if I tell you now."

"You didn't have to -"

"I know. I mean, _we_ know. But we wanted to. _I_ wanted -"

Sirius is a terrible liar. Remus has always known this. Maybe he'll wish he'd remembered that someday.

"What do you want?"

"I wanted to give you something."

And then he kisses him.

It's too hard and too wet and they're both embarrassingly inexperienced but Sirius gets an A for effort, as he does in everything, in life. Remus just stands there, kind of stunned, and lets it happen. 

Then, the pressure is gone and Sirius is gone.

There's a record lying on his bed when he looks up. _Led Zeppelin IV_. There's a note that says: _Try it. You might like it. - S._

*

Remus expects him to plead temporary insanity due to lack of sleep but he doesn't say anything at all about it. 

He thinks it's a joke at first. He's staring at James like maybe _he's_ suffering from temporary insanity, and has _everyone_ in Remus' life conspired to go mental all at once?

James just says, “It was Sirius' idea,“ like that makes it real. And Sirius doesn't do things half-arsed (well, most things), so he knows this is serious. 

Remus looks around at him and he just shrugs like it's no big deal, like he didn't ambush him last night, like he didn't kiss him, like he isn't trying to turn his world upside down in a single day. 

Normal kids get chocolate and Dungbombs for their birthdays. Not unexplained kisses from Sirius goddamned Black and your best friends offering to turn into animals to keep you company as you turn into a monster every month. 

“I think you're all stark raving mad but if you pull this off, you're also bloody geniuses."

And that's all the encouragement they need. 

*

It's easy to pretend that it never happened after that. Because there are distractions, lots of distractions. For all of them. Remus isn't sure how they do it without the aid of Time-Turners, to be honest. Especially Sirius and James who manage to ace all their subjects even while juggling Animagus transformations and Quidditch practice and extravagant pranks to disrupt the entire school about once every fortnight and (consequentially) detentions, and then _Lily_ , for James, somewhere in the middle of fourth year and (consequentially) a slew of random girls for Sirius. But it's _Sirius and James_. Anything, and everything, is possible.

James is probably off somewhere getting hexed by an angry redhead and Remus is watching Sirius slowly doze off on an enormous, dusty book. He regains consciousness just to sneeze loudly and then he's passed out again. Remus bites the inside of his mouth to keep from laughing. It can't be a coincidence that Sirius reminds him more and more of a dog every day. Well, maybe he always kind of did. Or maybe only Remus could see it before.

Remus likes watching him like this, in the rare, quiet, in-between moments, when he's not on the move, on the prowl, chasing something down, something dangerous and exciting: girls, trouble, love, life. Sirius doesn't know how to be still. Remus likes to make him though; it's kind of like a challenge. For both of them. On weekends when James and Peter are down by the Quidditch pitch or following Lily around, they lie in bed and put on records and Remus just forces him to _stay_ , even when it's one of the jazz ones he claims to hate. (Sometimes they fall asleep curled around each other but Remus isn't supposed to think about that.)

It's late when he wakes up. Remus has stopped pretending to read the same line over and over. Now he's just doodling a tiny black dog in the margin of his notes.

"Should be an artist, mate," Sirius says, sneaking up behind him, totally uncharacteristically. "That's spot-on."

They're really close now, they know. They just have the stability issue to sort out. The change works but it doesn't stick for very long and then they just go back and forth sporadically for a while.

He remembers the first time it _worked_ , remembers Padfoot rolling around at his feet and then a minute later, Sirius was there, out of breath and staring up at the sky unblinkingly. Then he'd sat up and they'd just looked at each other for a long moment before they started laughing wildly. Until James had tackled them both and they went rolling down the hill.

Remus sees something different in his eyes now, ever since that night, something happier. Maybe Padfoot's always in there now, just like he can always see Sirius in those big, dark puppy-eyes.

Remus remembers Sirius saying they wanted to do this for him. Maybe they did it for themselves too. Sirius has always wanted to claw his way out of his skin, a prison in its own way. Always wanted to be someone else, something else. 

Remus is too shut up inside his own head to even know how to be anyone else.

"You okay?" Sirius says, and it's not concern over the silence, because they know how to be quiet with each other. But this - this is a different kind.

"I just - we're really close, aren't we?"

"Yeah, we are." And then he gets this weird smile on his face and says, "Remember when we told you about it and you thought it was bonkers?"

"I still do," Remus points out.

"Yeah, maybe, but you've had time to adjust."

He wants to say, _To this, maybe. But to you? Never._

"Not the only thing I've had to adjust to," he says before they go quiet again and don't have the chance for another two years.

"Remus -" he says, warningly.

"No, I just - You never told me why." Remus doesn't think about it. He doesn't think about it in the shower, in endless History of Magic classes, when Sirius is reading something over his shoulder, warm breath ghosting over his neck, when he's scratching behind Padfoot's ears -

"We were _thirteen_. It was just a stupid thing."

"You were my _first kiss_ ," he says before his body betrays him and bolts, out of the library, out of the castle, probably to drown himself in the lake.

"Uh - me too."

Remus raises an eyebrow. "Really?"

"Yeah, that was - that was kind of the point."

" _What_ was the point?"

"I just - needed to know if it was real."

"Oh," he says and it's a relief somehow, to finally know, but also so devastating that he feels something shatter inside him. "So I guess you found what you were looking for."

"No - Remus, _no_ \- it wasn't - I _didn't_ -"

"But - there've been girls -"

"Had to keep up appearances, didn't I?" he says, a muscle in his jaw twitching like it always did when his family was brought up, by name or not.

"So, just - not _me_?"

Remus sees something flash across Sirius' face, like regret, like _heartbreak_.

"It was always you," he says, so quiet, and he smiles like it hurts to his core to admit it.

"But why then?"

"So we could be here, have this. I couldn't fuck this up, Moony, not before we really had a chance."

"How'd you know you would?"

"Because I do, because it's what I am. It's in my blood." And there's none of that brightness in his eyes now. They've gone as dark as his name.

"But - you're not. You're _different_ with me." He says it like it's a fact, like it's the most certain thing he's ever known. Maybe he only believes it because a part of him needs _Sirius_ to believe it so much.

"Am I?"

"Yeah, it's like - it's like you know you can't fool me."

"Maybe it's because I don't want to."

***

Sometimes, Sirius thinks he only has the ability to feel one emotion, absolutely, at a time. Maybe this is why he's always looked at Remus and been so fascinated by what goes on in his mind. Because it's obvious how much is buried behind his tired, too-old eyes: fear and anger and hatred, of the world, of himself. But there's so much more shielding it, all the beautiful, wonderful things that make up Remus.

Sirius has never quite managed that complexity of emotion. This has never been more apparent than it is right now. Because there's none of Remus's logic ("This is stupid, and reckless, and _stupid_."), none of Peter's self-preservation ("You're going to get in _so much trouble_."), none of James' righteousness ("Too far, Padfoot. _Too far_."). This is just - rage.

Because Snape's talking about _Remus_ and about Sirius's family, things he's made himself forget, things he's placed so firmly in the past that it may not even refer to him anymore. He's tried so hard, so damn hard, and he's never going to fit, not really, not in James' lovely family (even though he'd said, casual as James likes to act in serious moments, "You belong here, I mean, if you want," last summer), not in red and gold, not in this family of four he's found for himself, just like he's never fit in the family he was born into.

The difference is James looks at Snape and sees everything he's hated his whole life. Sirius looks at him and sees the person he could've become.

It's easy, it's so, so easy, to say it, to taunt him, to see his eyes light up excitedly, dangerously, as he thinks Sirius has given something away in the heat of the moment. To not feel sorry about it at all.

It's only after, _after_ , when it's probably too late, when there's a huge chance James didn't reach him in time, something else crawls into his brain, and it's not someone else's voice, not a warning; it's his own, and it's just a plea: _oh, god, Remus, no._

*

It's not fair, so not fair, that he's been so fucking careful for so long, and this is how he's going to lose him.

Remus is just really, really quiet. He doesn't tell him to fuck off, which is probably a good sign, but he also doesn't say anything else. Just doesn't look at him at all while Sirius bleeds onto the sheets. They're probably both bleeding onto the sheets right now. Sirius figures he'd deserved it, so he hadn't bothered fixing his broken nose. James has been watching too many movies (probably for Lily's benefit, he thinks bitterly, because he used to always find them silly before; then he feels ashamed for thinking it, for the first time). But Sirius knows now that _he'll_ get over it. That's not what he's worried about.

Remus could probably do this all night. Probably could do it until they graduate. Could probably do it until he's standing over Sirius' grave, still with that goddamned disappointed look on his face. Because that look is the _worst_. He'd rather take a thousand surprisingly strong right hooks from James Potter than have to endure that look for another second.

And then, amazingly, it's gone. And it's replaced by a confused one.

"I thought - I thought we were friends."

And that kind of blindsides him, because how could Remus be thinking about that right now? How could he be doubting - but how could he _not_ , right in this very moment?

 _We're more than friends. We're -_ What exactly? They'd kissed once, and then barely talked about it two years afterwards. 

Sirius - Sirius doesn't know how to do _this_. He doesn't know how to begin to say it, how to ask for it, for forgiveness, for whatever Remus is willing to give. It's not a coincidence that he turns into an attention-seeking, love-hungry mongrel. He isn't very subtle.

"I _am_ your friend," he says, pretty pathetically.

"Friends don't do this."

"Friends forgive each other when they make dumb fucking decisions."

Remus just shakes his head. "We're not friends. Never have been. James - James is your friend. He'll forgive you, because he thinks it's the right thing to do, and it'll be okay. Eventually. Everyone else - well, we don't really matter."

"That's not -"

"It's not? You said you didn't want to fool me. Well, stop trying."

*

Somehow, they're alone at dinner again, and it's probably been hundreds of times at this point, but he can only remember the first time. Remembers how he'd sort of startled a smile out of Remus, not with his usual innuendo, but by actually knowing some obscure work he'd mentioned. Remus used to talk about books like they were his friends back then; he still does it sometimes now, but less and less. It's kind of the same way he'd talk about bands or movies he'd sneak out to see, these worlds he wasn't supposed to inhabit that became so real to him, this other life, where he was someone else, someone better. Remus retreated into his own fictional worlds after he was bitten, too, but they were books of light magic and dark creatures and stories where heroes triumphed over monsters and never for a second doubted whether they were, in fact, the heroes.

They made do, before they came here, and then they had this, had each other, and Sirius never wondered if he'd ever lose it and what he'd do without it. Because it was like a dream, like one of those movies where the ragtag group of misfits would come together and save the day and then live happily ever after. Sirius has been trying to be this other person for so long that he never thought it would all catch up to him sooner or later. 

But now it's here, in plain sight, and there's no going back.

"You were right. James is the only real friend I've ever had. I don't have a lot of experience with it." He doesn't know how to say, _You intrigued me, your mind, your heart, all the parts I couldn't see. You were a problem to solve, something to do to pass the time, and someway along the way, I fell in love with you._

"You know, you never told me - what he said."

"He said - he said that I'd always be one of them, no matter what I do. Deep down."

Remus doesn't say anything, but his expression softens, and things are different after that, better. Not the same as it was before, but maybe it never will be.

What he doesn't ever tell him is the other things he'd said, about how no matter how big or dark the secret they're keeping is, it'll never be as bad as having poison and evil in your veins. And everyone knows. James knows. Remus knows. And they could never really love him.

*

They're the only people left in the dormitory that Christmas, probably for the same reason. Sirius is giving James some room, although he insists he doesn't need it. Remus doesn't want to go back to the cheer of family and holidays that will just leave him cold inside.

They're sitting on the ground next to Sirius' bed eating Chocolate Frogs when Remus looks at him and smiles, not yet as wide as they used to be, but it's enough for him to pluck up the courage.

"I don't want to be your friend," he says quietly, and it feels intimate, like a confession.

"You can't always get what you want, Sirius. Not even you."

"I don't want you to forgive me," he decides.

"Okay."

"I just want _you_."

"Okay."

*

It's the next morning when he wakes up, one hand under Remus' pyjama top, splayed across his stomach. He's warm, and he's here, and Sirius is grateful if only for that.

"I do, you know," Remus says, against the top of his head.

"What?" he asks, sleepily.

"Forgive you."

"Why?" he breathes out because he doesn't deserve it, doesn't deserve any of it, much less him.

"Because I think you need to be forgiven. Like we all do."

Sirius closes his eyes, lets himself accept it.


End file.
